The other day my cousin told me she was really excited to work as a professional film score composer. She sounded a little unsure, and she's a sophomore in high school, so having been out of college for a year now, and being a little bit further along in the journey of self-discovery, going through school, and finding a career, I offered her some unsolicited advice.
In the process of writing back to her, I wrote out all the most important things I've learned about being who you want to be, doing what you want to do, and I also wrote about my own journey so far.
Reading it back, I found it very encouraging and inspiring even to me, and so I thought I'd share it with everyone! Here's what I wrote to my cousin:
Here's a tip. I've learned that the most important step in your journey to knowing yourself, enjoying life, and to your education and career is finding out what you love. Find that thing that excites you more than anything and that you do for fun, or that thing that you could do if there were absolutely no objects in the way. If you could be anything, what would you do/be?
Once you realize that, you have to be really honest with yourself. Will you be happy doing anything else? Will you always regret it if you don't do this thing that you love? Is this thing that you love something that you absolutely have to have? Do you have any idea what it takes, how much work it will take to get there, and how hard it will be? Are you willing to do all that work to get there because you want to do it no matter what?
If that's the case, then you have to determine then and there, no matter what, unless you end up having a different dream, you ARE going to do this.
After that you have to realize that becoming who you want to be doesn't happen sometime in the future, and it doesn't start tomorrow. It starts now. If you want to be a composer, be it now. I'm not saying you should compose Beethoven's 9th Symphony, or the soundtrack to Inception 2, but you should do whatever you can today so that you will be the composer you want to be tomorrow.
By that I mean, little and big things: talking to people in the industry however possible. Geeking out about it. Learning everything you possibly can. Randy Newman's middle name, his influences, his first composition. Play piano every day. Buy a cheep notebook, maybe a little one, that you carry around with you everywhere, and call it your inspiration/idea/song journal and write things down in it daily.
Find mentors and learn how they got to where they are. This could be a high school music teacher, or a semi-professional conductor composer you see at a local opera or something.
Read lots of books.
Listen to lots of music. If you want to do something with music, you need to know it all. Listen to every record, CD, opera, ballet, musical, film soundtrack, and live performance you can. Become a library for what you love. Have a goal of being an authority on what you love, so that people can ask you almost anything about it and you'll have an answer at the drop of a hat. Form opinions about different pieces. Know what you love and why. Know what you hate and why. Be able to defend both.
Maybe start a blog and write about it, reviewing different pieces, or talking about what makes them unique. Learn different styles and techniques, study theory, all kinds. Study the differences in culture in music, western vs eastern, European VS. American, Asian, South American.
Back at the beginning of 2011 I saw Tangled in theaters. It was in the dollar theater, and I went to see it 3 times in a week because I loved it and was so inspired by it. It was absolutely beautiful, and I wanted to go into that world.
After coming out of the theater like a moonstruck kid with giant eyes, I said to myself, I NEED to make that kind of thing. I NEED to be an animator.
I was scared and I had some doubt about it. How could I possibly do this? Being an animator is like as hard as becoming a professional basketball player. How could I, an inexperienced kid, with not that much talent, become an animator, especially considering I was at a school for studying something else.
"I don't care," I told myself. "Whatever it takes. I care about this too much not to die trying."
From that point on I decided that even though I wasn't in school for animation and I barely knew anything about it, I was going to do it.
I emailed my best friend about it, and he almost tried to squash this crazy idea I had. He cautioned me saying that I better either buckle down or prepare for disappointment. He said that a friend of his brother's had been trying to become an animator for years and he couldn't break in. He said that if I wanted to do it I'd have to make myself draw for about 3 hours a day.
This momentarily caused me to second guess myself. But then I realized that he was saying all the things that I had already been telling myself, and I knew how to answer it. This wasn't a kid's game, this wasn't a passing whimsy. This thing was in me now and I wasn't gonna let it die.
I started drawing every day. I read about stuff on animation everyday. I created a complicated and extensive bookmark list on my internet browser and basically started a library of references and inspirational articles and artists. I read about the news in animation, read about techniques, found other animators online.
I started a blog and tried to be as professional as possible, updating regularly about things I found inspiring in animation and news that I found.
After 2 years of blogging, that blog became Animation Force, and we got discovered and now have over 31,000 followers, and that was just a side thing to keep me active and up to date in the industry!
I found books on the subject and basically started teaching myself a college level animation course by myself.
I had never even animated before, and for over a year I continued just practicing, researching, writing, and learning.
Then out of nowhere a friend approached me and asked if I wanted to co-direct an animated short. The short would be 2D hand drawn, and I would be the director, and the lead animator. We would also be doing it for an assignment in a class and for our college film festival, which gave us less than 20 days to do a 3 minute short (that's a ridiculously short amount of time to prepare). I was FREAKING out! This scared me more than anything because I had never once animated before for real. And yet, this also excited me beyond all reason. I told my friend that it was insane, but maybe, and I'd let him know in the next day or two.
I didn't sleep for 2 nights.
We decided to do it. I talked to every artist I knew at the school and was able to recruit somewhere around 20 of them to help with the animated short. None of them had ever animated before. I was one of the few who knew in theory how to do it. If it hadn't been for that last year of teaching myself it never would have been possible.
I don't know how I convinced so many to help. Maybe it was that crazy look in my eye as I asked them. It seemed crazy. But I told myself, even if we failed we would succeed, because we would learn a ton by doing it, and even if it didn't get into the film festival, or if it didn't get a good grade in our class, we would still learn.
But I already knew it was gonna happen. I saw it in my minds eye.
We started character design, and one of the artists who I asked for help told me that we didn't have what it takes to animate. This artist told me that we weren't good enough artists and that they had seen things like this before and it all came crashing down; we were in for disappointment, they said.
This was a big blow. I grieved over it for about an hour or two.
Then I moved on.
Over the next 15 days I sent 10 emails a day, sent and received something like 500 texts a day, and called people on the phone about 5 times a day, also meeting with the other artists about once every other hour. I assigned different scenes to people, and joy of joys! I started animating for the first time!
Actually, the first time I animated I was extremely angry and frustrated. This was flipping hard!!
Another sleepless night, and I got over it and picked up the pencil again. Then in a heat of excited passion, I animated and keyed a scene that I thought was really good, and even experimented a bit and pulled off a complicated move. After that I was very proud and I've never gained so much confidence so quickly as when I did that.
After I think 14 days, we finished over 900 drawings and got the animation done. 3 days later we handed in the project. A week later, we got into the film festival. I saw my first animation ever up on a giant screen in front of hundreds of people and heard them laugh at MY SCENE!
A year later, I realize how important that first dose of success was, and also, how little I knew. But that just eggs me on even harder.
I guess the point of all this is to give you a dose of what it's like before you start. And here's a really important bit of advice that I have gleaned from my own experience: Never forget that you love this thing and you need it, and no matter what happens, whether you feel up or down, whether people encourage or insult you, let those things egg you on even further. I'm probably not even halfway there, but I'm so confident I will get there because I know, for one thing, that God is with me and has helped all this to fall into place for me, and also, I know that I WILL NEVER GIVE UP.
So, I hope this doesn't make you fall asleep with how long it is, and that it maybe excites and inspires you, and gives you a spark that you can grasp on to, which will start your own journey. Maybe you're only in high school, but I wish I'd started in high school. If I had, I'd be so much further now. It really doesn't take all that long if you're really involved and motivated. At least in my experience. But here's the thing, I always knew I could keep going even if it took forever, because I love it too much even if I don't get any recognition for it. This is what I want to do whether I'm paid for it or not. You need to make that determination too.
